Latest blogs

Oliver Dowding: It is clear to most sensible observers that the use of antibiotics within agriculture is going to have to reduce due to increasing resistance problems and nightmare scenarios within human medicine. For organic farmers this is not such a big issue: organic standards require farmers to maximise preventative husbandry, and deploy other means than antibiotics, which are reserved for use as a last resort.

Liz Bowles: Improving organic systems and markets is always at the forefront of our minds at the Soil Association. As part of our ongoing work we have prioritised a number of areas for special attention over the coming months and years which I wanted to update you on. However we are keenly aware that we may not always know about the challenges that you face from day to day so we really do welcome your thoughts on where you believe we should be placing emphasis.

Louise Payton: So today is World Soil day. Why on earth do we need a day on soils? It’s no coincidence that our planet shares its name with the stuff. Soil, earth, or dirt, as it is known in the USA, is important.

Janet Blikmans: Imagine a beautifully sunny day in August, not too hot, a few clouds in the sky, a slight breeze and rolling hills. I arrive on a 100 acre suckler farm in Wiltshire to spend the day with owner Miss Lydia Otter and farm manager Richard Hurford and many more people I meet throughout the day. As well as a small herd of organic Angus sucklers and their offspring (oh and the not so friendly bull Jaguar) there are chickens, donkeys, pigs, goats, dogs and a cat. When I arrive in the morning, like on any average farm, business is in full flow already.

Marianne Landzettel: ... is not a synonym for a journalist writing about agriculture. An organic farmer I recently met coined the phrase. Jim Dufosee raises sheep and beef cattle in Wiltshire and grows feed. When he switched to organic it wasn’t necessarily because he was one of the converted. Back then there were financial incentives to do so. "Today I just know I’m doing the right thing", he says, and he wouldn’t go back to conventional farming even if they paid him.

Louise Payton: It has been all over the news - the dramatic decline in our bees. The most attention has been centred on our honeybees, and they are indeed faring badly with a third of bee colonies lost by British beekeepers last winter (2012/2013). But our wild bees are in deep trouble too.

Louise Payton: Our countryside has changed colour in the past century. Now mostly green or perhaps yellow with rapeseed (and more recently brown with flood water), it used to be a profusion of reds, blues, whites, yellows and purples when wildflowers bloomed in all their splendour. Agricultural intensification has been the reason for this change in palette - 97% of our wildflower meadows have been converted, weed-killers have obliterated the huge variety of wild plants (weeds) that insects and farmland birds depend on, and mixed cropping (used to control insect pests and break-up disease cycles), have been replaced with inorganic fertilisers and repetitive monocultures.

Louise Payton: Skylarks are an iconic British species - they are the very voice of British Spring and their song was once commonplace in our countryside. During the World War I they were one of the most powerful symbols of hope for British Soldiers, as they soared and sung above the trenches, reminding troops so clearly of home. But we face losing our iconic species - in recent decades with the advent of intensive farming systems, we have seen the decline of skylarks in their millions.

Lynda Brown: The week has started with a headline story about the Chief Medical Officer’s chilling warning that antibiotic usage and bug resistance to them was now so serious that in 10-20 years time, we could be back to the stone age: due to the risk of infection every visit to a hospital could potentially be fatal, and simple and complex operations, including those for organic transplants and cancer could be futile.

Catherine Fookes: It’s hard not to notice that our food prices have shot up, and while we might not be going hungry just yet, what’s the bet that a lot of us are starting the New Year slightly more cash strapped than last, armed with ways of feeding ourselves on a budget, planning imaginative meals with leftovers and generally cutting back on dining out. The increase in food prices is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s increasingly becoming a worldwide issue of food security. Launched this week, the Enough Food for Everyone, IF campaign, is tackling world hunger head on with a hard hitting celebrity backed campaign supported by industry and charitable organisations - the latest in a string of initiatives to tackle this issue.

Rob Haward: Conversion of all of the world’s agricultural land to organic could reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 49 giga tonnes/year, delaying climate change by 4 to 5 years. The research presented by Urs Niggli at the conference, a professor at one of Europe’s leading research organisations, showed that in a 16 year trial organic farming offered the potential to sequester 2.4 tonnes of CO2e per year more carbon than an equivalent non organic farm. The benefits were most marked in horticultural holdings but were demonstrable in every farm type.